Is UX certification helpful for getting a job?

I keep getting asked by User Experience (#UX) jobseekers whether they should get certification. By this, they mean accreditation by a third party, normally after taking some classes and passing a written exam.

Now, some industries use accreditation as the primary or sole indication that someone is qualified to do a job. That accreditation may also require continuing professional education in order to stay current and certified. Other job fields have well-respected training courses that can take months or years to complete and qualify for certification at the end.

But does the ability to show a certificate on your LinkedIn profile and resume mean that much in the field of user experience? More to the point, should it?

The answer to that first question appears to be that certification is more likely to be a positive than a negative. But to be honest, that's faint praise for something that can cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to achieve. I would suggest that certification is not going to be the primary influencing factor for most people who are hiring.

Let's dive in a little deeper, so you can draw your own conclusions.

The question

I asked the following question on LinkedIn:

Now, this was a one-question survey, asked to a probably quite non-representative sample, over an unusual time for people who are hiring (>13% unemployment rate in the USA). Also, it might not have included all the possible answers people want to give. So, is this the kind of data I'd build some massive new product plan or marketing campaign from? Absolutely not!

But it is interesting as a finger-on-the pulse snapshot, and I know I have a lot of UX managers in my network who are responsible for making hiring decisions.

My potential biases

I went into this with very mixed feelings about certification myself. I have heard anecdotally that one of the more established certifying groups isn't always very well respected, and that carries over to their certification too. A couple of others are newer to the market, and so employers can only just begin to measure the value of their certification in a practical environment.

Certification demonstrates that you have learned a certain skill set, not that you have ever applied those skills to solve business problems.

Another reason that I'm skeptical is that the motivation for creating a certification scheme isn't always altruistic. There's money to be made in selling training and certification. I've been part of that training process myself for many years now. Making money is fine. It's whether there's at least an equal benefit to the student as the benefit to the certifying organization. Especially when the student is a jobseeker on a limited or non-existent budget.

I think it's possible to provide that value, and to help students demonstrate their achievements by providing a respected certification. I'm just not sure all the current offerings do so.

The results

I want to thank all the people who responded. There were quite a few of you! I had 135 responses over the course of a week, and the results looked like this:

The most common response was that certification is nice to have (54%), followed by no difference (34%).

Around 2/3 of respondents said that certification made a positive difference ("Nice to have" or "Very important"), compared to around 1/3 who thought it was neutral or made a negative difference ("No difference", "Actively avoid").

However, the proportion of "Very important" responses is really quite low at 9%.

There were no more than 2 responses from any one organization so there shouldn't be a strong influence from any one employer's policies. Most responses came from people who identified as some variation on UX research, design, or strategy.

There were several responses that I would typically remove from the analysis, because they came from people who listed their position as student or job seeker, but I'm not going to remove them because I don't know whether those people have previously had roles where they were in a position to hire other UXers.

Two of the people who said that certification was very important and one who said it was nice to have had listed their certification in their profile summaries. None of the "no difference" group had done so.

Incidentally I also had 34 reactions to the post. These were most often from people who appear to be currently looking for a job. The 10 comments were mainly just support for the idea of running this type of survey.

Two that stood out are: "It's been a while since I've hired for UX, but I *never* ask about certifications. With UX, it's more about the work the person has done and if they have good narratives for their past use cases. I like to know if a person knows why a certain UX design was effective. I also like to know if they've ever dealt with a client that was set on a bad UX design and how they handled it."

and "Personally, I have never been asked about any certification, rather projects I’ve worked on and the research, design process. Decisions I’ve made on the way and why I’ve made them."

What does it all mean?

With all my previous caveats about the validity of this survey firmly in place, it looks like having a certification is a factor for around two thirds of employers, but not super-important for most.

Also, certification is not going to be the primary influencing factor for most people who are hiring.

I haven't seen job listings that require UX certification. They may exist, but I doubt that the lack of certification is going to disqualify an otherwise well-qualified UX candidate.

On the flip side, certification won't hurt your chances with the vast majority of employers. I'm really curious to learn more about the people who responded that they'd actively avoid candidates with certification. I imagine those hiring managers have had some bad experiences with "certified" candidates in the past. I might well follow up with these people later!

So is it worth it? When you weigh up the value to employers against the cost to you to complete the certification process, certification might be one way to gain an extra edge over other potential job applicants, but it's expensive and time consuming. If you are working in a company that will pay for it, go for it! If you're out of work and hoping this will be the magic ticket to a new job, your decision may be different.

I have a feeling that certification is a useful way for employers to quickly find out if you have a certain minimum skill set. But most of the certification options don't demonstrate that you have ever applied those skills to solve business problems (with a few exceptions). You might be able to find other ways of demonstrating how you have applied those skills.

Alternatives to certification

Starting out in UX can be a challenge, whether you're new to the job market or transitioning from another role. That's especially true since UX became a "hot area" so there's lots of competition for not so many jobs. You want to be confident of your skills, and you'll need to demonstrate those skills to potential employers.

If you're looking more for training than for certification, check out online courses. I know I'm biased because I'm also an instructor, but I really like the offerings on LinkedIn Learning. The quality of instruction is really high and it's delivered by experts in the field. If certificates are your thing, you get one for each course you take. You can get free access for a month to check it out. I'm purposefully not providing an affiliate link here so I can avoid criticism of running a bait-and-switch operation with this article.

If you can list positive impactful outcomes of your previous work, that might outweigh the value of certification

Another alternative is demonstrated experience. At some point in your career, the certification becomes less important and your track record takes over. That might be earlier in your career than you think. If you can list positive impactful outcomes of your work, preferably with dollar values attached, and if you can tell good stories around your experiences creating this work, then this might well outweigh the value of certification.

I've also written another post looking at the certification options that are out there, if you want to follow the certification path.

What next?

If this was an academic paper, at this point I'd be saying "The results demonstrate that more research is needed in this area."

It seems that the people that responded were split about the value of certification, coming out overall on the positive side. But why? Do certain kinds of organization or certain industries value it more than others?

I want to know whether one certification is valued over the others, and if so which. I also want to know why. For instance, do employers want a more practical or more theoretical-based certification? Are they looking for certification of ability to perform certain UX research methods, or more general knowledge of interaction design principles? Is a written test enough, or should there be a practical component too?

How comparatively important is certification compared to academic qualifications, industry experience, or a good portfolio? Is certification more important for beginners, or for more established UX people?

That suggests a combination of quant and qual questions, with some 1-1 interviews to understand the landscape followed by a larger-scale survey to quantify the effects. That sounds very much like work to me. Is it worth my time? Let me know in the comments!